September the 21st, 2023 – The Croatian company Smart Sense has created sensors which measure the quality of the air. After having signed a contract with the Swiss distributor Also International, which will provide access to hitherto inaccessible markets, these Croatian products are set to hit the EU the UK.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, Smart Sense, a domestic technology company that develops and produces “Internet of Things” (IoT) solutions for monitoring air quality, is about to expand its business. This expansion comes thanks to the cooperation they have established with the company Also International Services, a large Swiss distributor.
Sensees – a measuring station for monitoring the quality of outdoor air and environmental parameters, and My Sensees – an indoor air quality sensor, should soon be distributed out into the European Union and into Great Britain.
In addition to that, as part of the cooperation with the Swiss distributor, the My Sensees sensor is integrated with the Also All Things Talk IoT platform. This means that the data collected by the sensor will be available to users of that platform. There’s no need to talk about the significance that the contract with Also International will have for this impressive Zagreb-based enterprise, which currently employs about 30 people.
Croatian innovation
“This contract will open up a new network of partners for us, i.e. the establishment of relations with new partners across all European Union countries, and thus access to markets we haven’t been present on so far,” pointed out Hana Matanović, director of the Croatian company Smart Sense. The result of a larger partner network should involve the greater delivery of innovative products that are fully developed, designed and manufactured in right here in the Republic of Croatia. However, they don’t yet have accurate calculations about how much growth this contract could actually realistically bring them.
“We’re currently examining the market and are in the process of defining the players that will be the most powerful for us. Therefore, we don’t have predictions for now. That said, the air quality monitoring/measuring market is growing in general, so we definitely do expect growth,” noted the director of the Croatian company Smart Sense. The company, which was founded a decade ago, develops systems for monitoring the quality of both indoor and outdoor air.
Currently, according Matanović, the system for monitoring the quality of outdoor air is their best-selling product, and it is used by cities, environmental and various health institutions. The one for monitoring indoor air quality was relatively recently redesigned, thus enabling it to be available to private users as well. The importance of air quality gained importance especially back during the global coronavirus pandemic.
“Air pollution is an invisible killer, and the pandemic has highlighted the importance of air quality. For all these reasons, we’ve redesigned our sensors for measuring indoor air quality in order to be able to offer it to a wider range of users. We want to encourage people to improve their homes with a device that will positively influence their lifestyle, by encouraging, for example, the more frequent opening of windows or air purification. This is essential for health,” said Matanović.
The Croatian Smart Sense company is conquering the market
This new contract with Switzerland’s Also International should lead to the wider application of sensors for indoor air quality. “With this contract, our indoor segment has gained in importance and can be positioned much more easily on retail shelves through the distributor, and for other users through the network of partners, such as cities, schools, kindergartens and so on,” Matanović explained.
The Croatian Smart Sense company, based in the capital, initially focused its business more on foreign markets, and one of its first major partners was Nokia. It was thanks Nokia that Smart Sense systems were installed all over the world.
“Later on, we also started to raise awareness right here on the domestic market about the importance of monitoring air quality, both outside and inside. Today, around 30 cities across Croatia have our sensors, and our indoor sensors have just been delivered to 400 schools,” Matanović pointed out. As far as foreign markets are concerned, the majority of their projects done so far have been in Cyprus, Slovenia and Greece.
